had done—” Auria rolled her eyes. “It’s true!”
“Did she have sex with you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then I think we can safely say her contrition was limited,” she said dryly.
Mircea knew there was an appropriate response to that, something suitably cutting, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of it. Or much of anything else. Except the obvious.
“Don’t you dare,” Auria told him sternly.
He stared at her desperately, wondering if she had any idea—
Her lips quirked. “Leave us,” she told the girls.
“We, er, we don’t mind finishing,” the one in front of him said breathlessly.
“I’m sure. Out.”
They went, closing the door behind them. And leaving him standing ridiculously in front of the door, naked and aching and unfulfilled. And then it got worse.
“Come here.”
Mircea hesitated, but although her face was as serenely beautiful as ever, the blue eyes were laughing at him. His back stiffened. He started walking, despite knowing how he must look.
“Stop.”
The tip of a lace-edged fan came to rest at the center of Mircea’s chest, halting him halfway across the luxurious bedroom.
He blinked; he hadn’t even seen her move.
He also hadn’t seen her undress, because she hadn’t. She was wearing a blue gown that brought out her eyes, slashed to show the fine linen chemise below, with a strand of pearls woven through her thick auburn hair. She even had on shoes instead of slippers, dainty, low-heeled mules in a matching blue, decorated with delicate silver embroidery and seed pearls.
She looked like a duchess.
It made Mircea feel even more vulnerable as she walked around him, and trailed the scratchy lace fan across muscles that jerked and bunched, following her in a ripple of movement.
“So, to summarize,” she said mildly. “You knew she was interested. You knew you had the upper hand. You knew you could have asked for anything—”
“I couldn’t—”
“You could. You can always ask. Do so prettily enough and they won’t mind, even if they turn you down.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“But Martina does.”
“And she really thinks she’s going to get a fortune for me?”
“She thinks she’s going to get something, but not necessarily a fortune.”
“Then why does she care so damned much? She likely already made back what she spent—”
“This isn’t about money. A senator has abilities others do not.”
“Such as?”
“To accuse . . . or to pardon.”
“And why . . . does Martina . . . need a pardon?” he gasped, trying not to react as the fan trailed down his stomach, and caused the muscles to clench convulsively. Whether they were trying to pull away or go toward her, Mircea wasn’t sure.
Until she ran the edge of it down his sex, causing him to shudder violently.
She raised him with the end of her open fan, watching him fill and swell against the delicate black lace.
“What Martina does is her business,” she told him softly. “Mine is to make you understand that the mind is one thing, but the body . . . is something else. It has its own wants, its own needs, and its own language to express them.”
She didn’t give an example. She didn’t have to. Mircea did that for himself, lifting off the platform and into the air, hard and aching without even a touch.
Auria went up on tiptoe, putting coral lips next to his ear. “Once you learn the body’s language, it won’t matter what a client says. Or even what they think they want. Their body will tell you the truth. Their need will tell you. And you will find that you can get them to agree to almost anything, once their body is on your side. Do you understand?”
Mircea swallowed. Nothing like an object lesson. “Yes, I—”
The fan abruptly snapped shut, hard enough to make him flinch.
“We’ll see. Get on the bed.”
Chapter Thirty
Mircea started to comply, but something stopped him. Some clue in the tension in her spine, the look in her eyes, he didn’t know. He wasn’t as adept at reading this language of the body as she was, but he knew desire when he saw it.
And hers wasn’t for unquestioning obedience.
Which worked out well, since neither was his.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded when, instead of complying, he started circling her slowly. Examining her as she had him.
Hair a true auburn: not brown, not red, but a perfect combination of the two. It complimented her complexion, which was naturally the pearlescent white so prized in Venice that some women were known to paint egg whites on their faces to emulate it. Breasts high and firm, and shown off to advantage by the low cut dress. Sweet rounded neck, delicate jawline, dainty, feminine features—
And large blue eyes snapping at him angrily.
In short, she was beautiful.
But he doubted it was her looks that made her so sought after. There was an underlying sweetness about Auria. She mostly managed to hide it behind a tough outer shell, but he’d caught glimpses of it on occasion. And not just when she’d cried for Sanuito—the only one who had. But in the flutter of thick black lashes, in the edge of a lip caught between snow white teeth, or like now, in a flash of uncertainty in blue, blue eyes.
Until she saw him notice, and her brows drew together. “I said—”
“I heard you. And I am acceding to a lady’s wishes.”
“The lady wishes you on the bed.”
“No,” Mircea said, watching her.
“No?”
“No, the lady doesn’t,” he elaborated. “The lady doesn’t want me here at all. That’s why she had others here to start with. Why she wore such formal attire—”
“I didn’t dress for you.”
“Didn’t you? You usually wear Turkish dress about the house,” Mircea pointed out, referring to the long, open sided robes the ladies of Venice had borrowed from their eastern sisters. Worn over a loose chemise, with simple flat-soled slippers, it was a far more comfortable outfit that that considered suitable for the street. “Yet today . . .”
“This is what I felt like wearing.”
“It’s lovely.”
“Get on the bed.”
“You seem insistent.”
“And you seem stubborn!”
“As you said, I never did learn to take orders well.”
Beautiful blue eyes narrowed. “A fact that will soon change.”
“But not here. Here is where you work, where pleasure is turned into a business—”
“That’s the business we’re in, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“—so you can’t be yourself here.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“I think I am. In that bed you’re not Auria. You’re Venice’s most expensive courtesan. In that bed, you’re whoever your clients want you to be, so that they do what you want them to do, whether they realize it or not—”
“You’re damned right they do.”
“But none of them give you what you really want.”
“Don’t they?” An eyebrow arched. “Look around.”
“I have. But amassing a fortune . . . that’s what the lady wants. What the courtesan wants. What does Auria want?”
Mircea saw her face shut down. “Auria doesn’t want anything.”
“Everyone wants something.”
“Auria doesn’t.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“I think perhaps Auria hasn’t been asked what she wants, in a long time—”
“Auria doesn’t exist anymore! This,” she gestured around. “This is who I am now!”